On Fish that haunt and book club updates and such....
I have recently released a kit on Etsy. It's the biggest, most expensive kit I have ever made. It's going to stay that way, as in: after this I will make some kits that are more affordable, but this just needed to get out into the big world and swim free.
I named it Come Be My Light after a book that was about Mother Teresa, released shortly after her death. I read it at the time of the publication and it left me thinking about her; her faith - for so long that I randomly named a necklace after it almost 12 years after reading it. The book was a series of letters between the mother and her spiritual advisor. My takeaway from it may not be the moral of the book, but what I got out of it was that after her calling, Mother Teresa did no longer receive heavenly communique.
Up till that point, she felt like such events guided her life. Then they stopped. Complete silence, no more radio transmissions and so she felt truly alone and forsaken and wrong. Throughout her talking to her spiritual advisor, she came to the conclusion that the radio silence was a deepest sort of unity with Christ. Christ on the cross. What He experienced in the "Father, why have you forsaken me" moments. That; in utter loneliness, Teresa felt the unity with the loneliest moment of Christ and therefore she was able to go on knowing that in the silence, the deep darkness of the human condition, God was with her and she shared the suffering of Christ.
Well, I found beauty in this. In a way this is not very different from existentialism. In finding freedom in unlikely places of imprisonment. In a way it's really not very different from moral relativism either.
It made me think about how we narrate our own story is so very important. There is what we perceive out there, but the story we tell can be a tragedy or a comedy. Drama, suspense, horror? A thriller, a documentary of any sort. A happy cartoon perhaps? It's up to each of us. And there is an awful lot of shit around lately- maybe this has been always this way, it seems like there is a lot more of it since the pandemic. So there is an onslaught on the excrement of the world in never ending tsunamis, but we tell the story of our own lives to ourselves, to the world every single day and we either becomes heroes, victims, bystanders, perpetrators, or anything else. The story is either of the absence of God's light, or the absence turns into a solemn unity with the divine, through suffering.Or a comedy, if it was up to me.
What the narration of the story made Mother Teresa do is up to just and timely criticism these days and it is beyond the scope of my musing to get entangled in that in this silly blog post of mine about a necklace. But more than her positive or negative actions, her thought process inspired me to look at my life and keep on evaluating the story I tell every step of the way. As humans we have power over very little of what happens to us: Where we are born and what we look like still influences so much of what we can hope for in 2021 that it makes me sad every time I think of it. But we all owe it to ourselves to narrate our stories the way we see it fit. Hence my life is never a tragedy, more of a comedy in progress- and out of all, Mother Teresa's broken receiver for God's radio helped my understanding that my internal narration is influenced by outside happenings, but it is NOT defined by them.
This is great, but what does it have to do with fish? Anglerfish in particular?
Nothing really. But they have lights. And I have been making them here and there for 10 years.
And they are chasing a light. The glowing lights the anglerfish are after a highly stylized, almost alien looking light sources. Will it consume them, or will they be consumed by it? Who knows. It's definitely an eldritch glow and one of them is gibbous and there are wee suction cups involved, so really, who knows? Why did it remind me of Mother Teresa? Who knows what got cross wired in my head to make that connection. I like that it happened, but who knows.The Mother and Lovecraft were not that different after all.
The kit is nothing new. You don't need it. If you have done any fish project of mine, you are not getting anything new here. It's very straight forward, the colors are right, the shapes are right. God knows I don't like everything I do, but this feels right. It's a good composition, fits right, has everything right going for it. It's a giant buh bye solute to Swarovski and not in a good way.The last new project from me that features their products. It's a fine thing. Not a useful thing,not an innovative thing. It's a nod to a decade of fishies. For a while I was solely known as "the girl who does fish, you know, the one with the accent". There were times I resented this, times I was all about it. And now there are just times. Tis' what tis'. Here is the last monument to that reputation, embracing the wonders of fame it has bestowed on me,wondering at how random that is; revisiting some roots. Call it what you may. It is whatever you say it is. So is me. Neither the fish or I care much. We just go on telling our stories to ourselves, reinventing ourselves according to our needs, according to our capabilities and some such.
I certainly did not invent fish. I certainly did not invent bead embroidery and I would ever so strongly urge you to take a comedic approach to life rather than a dramatic or tragic one and laugh wholeheartedly at any fool who tells you they invented any kind of beading. Good friends and neighbours: we are but dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. A great many things came before us that we build upon even without realizing and it's good to eat a slice of humble pie. If my work ever inspired you, let this one inspire you to do your own thing too without dropping a dime. I am honoured that if it does. If you feel like dropping $225 on a kit, I got them right here. ( Click on the word here at the end of the previous sentence to be magically transported to my Etsy store, while supplies last.)
Either way, I like that I see fishies looking back at me from unlikely places. I see them pop up on social media here and there. Makes my heart sing with joy. Keep on making them. They make the world a happier place.
That's about what I got to say about fish.
Now onto book club matters. Our discussion today (1/31/2021) about Keith Donohue's Stolen Child was wonderful. Lively conversation about the book, about beads, about current issues ensued for longer than planned, because we never ran out of things to talk about. It was the bee's knees.
If you feel like participating the next time, the next book club zoom meeting will take place on February 25th at 10:00 am mountain time and we will be discussing Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog." Here is the info you need to join us on zoom:
Kinga Nichols is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Book Club with Kinga, February 2021
Time: Feb 25, 2021 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Meeting ID: 822 4496 4353
Passcode: 115836
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Now, since you read so many words without pictures, I feel obliged to entertain you with pictures of current creations that only exist for their own purpose, not kits, not something you can buy in any shape or form. I have posted these on Facebook before, so if you follow me there, these are not going to be that new, but still. Pictures. Pictures of pretties:
On a personal note: I have a new pugfant to cherish and to hold. I needed baby energy, and I got more than I bargained for. I give you Agent Nancy Mayhem. Yes, she is a model.
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